Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Oracle updates HCM Cloud with help desk app, offline mobile support

The Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud falls under the company's general (and quite formidable) Oracle Cloud.

Oracle on Wednesday announced a series of updates to the company's industry-specific Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud.
Developed natively within the HCM Cloud, it features full case management and escalation capabilities for complex issue resolution, as well as the same workflows, analytics, social capabilities and user interface as the HCM Cloud.The enterprise software giant is adding a help desk application designed to give HR managers more visibility into the workforce and employees a more user friendly portal for accessing HR resources.
HCM Cloud is also gaining a portal where employees can search for volunteer opportunities.
Beyond HCM updates, the tech titan also added a few new features to the Oracle Learning Cloud. First launched last year, Learning Cloud technically falls under the umbrella of the Oracle HCM Cloud, which in turn falls under the company's general Oracle Cloud.
The platform promises contextual and social learning functions, educating users in real-time with personalized recommendations based on job types and skills.
The latest additions include new capabilities that allows learning content to be embedded into the context of business processes. Oracle Learning Cloud now also includes an offline mobile application to enable training activities without internet or broadband connectivity.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

5 powerful data trends to watch in 2016


Big data has finally hit its stride in enterprise and it keeps growing. Here are the trends that will define big data in 2016.

If technology had a Zodiac, 2015 would be the year of big data.
More businesses used data of all forms to make decisions, and more consumers learned more about their life and their habits with the help of data.
With this momentum, the year ahead will be a big one for the information economy. Here are five trends in data usage that we expect to see in 2016.
1. Data as a corporate asset
It's one thing to acknowledge the value of data in theory, and it's another to act on that value. Gartner's Doug Laney said that organizations have been giving it lip service, but not behaving as though they see data as an asset in terms of the way they're collecting, generating, managing, and deploying it. However, that is changing in that more organizations are thinking about data as a corporate asset.
The problem is that information is "not a recognized balance sheet asset," Laney said. And, that inhibits truly engaging data in the business.
"As with any asset, all forms will be collected, maintained, and utilized," said Rob Thomas, vice president of product development for the analytics platform at IBM. "Not just the traditional structured data, but unstructured, text, Internet of Things (connected devices), etc."
2. Deeper customer data
One of the most valuable types of data available to businesses is customer data. Whether it is consumer retail customers or enterprise clients, knowing how they approach the product is crucial. However, customers are approaching businesses from different angles and different platforms, and companies are finding it difficult to keep up.
"In 2016, we'll see more focus on a combination of deterministic (log-in / authentication) and probabilistic (data management platforms) methods to bridge this gap," said Brent Dykes, evangelist for customer analytics at Adobe. "With growing privacy concerns from consumers, brands will need to be careful about how they use this cross-device customer data in their marketing efforts."
3. Growing data variety
Customers are still one of the driving data forces for many brands. But, the types of data collected on customers is expanding well beyond where they clicked on a webpage or what their perceived demographic is.
"As mobile becomes the primary digital channel for many brand interactions, it offers a rich, new type of data—location data at macro (GPS) and micro (LE Bluetooth beacons) levels," Dykes said. "Location data is a valuable arrow in marketer's quivers that can be used for location-specific, in-context offers and personalization."
In addition to capturing customer information, businesses are moving into a host of other areas to capture the data associated with it.
"There's been an awakening, if not yet a complete shift in focus, on the value of data that streams from things—whether it's cars, or refrigerators, or drones, or whatever that is," Laney said. "That's the next wave of big data."
Additionally, certain industries are looking at other unique data points and how they affect the business. For example, Laney said, some lenders look at social media to determine potential risk in an investment. Also industries like manufacturing, distribution, and retail look at weather data and its effect on their organization.
Moving beyond next year, we'll likely see even more data types being accounted for. Laney said, within the next decade, he wouldn't rule out the use of biometric data or even DNA. And, as the variety of data increases, vendors need to do more to accommodate it.
4. Data by industry
As with many tech trends, certain industries get a head start as early adopters in the space. Big data is no exception. Financial services, technology companies, retail, and telco are all leaders in leveraging data in their workflows.
"Because they are further down the maturity curve, they will be generating significant benefits from their early-adopter investments in technology, people, processes, and culture," Dykes said.
In 2016, these leaders will likely continue to widen the gap between themselves and the laggards in other markets. Although, there are industries and verticals that are taking an alternative approach, or looking at different types of data, and gaining value from it.
"We're also seeing major breakthroughs in industries such as automotive, aerospace, electronics, industrial products, oil and gas, and energy and utilities where the larger focus is on analyzing equipment and machine-generated data to predict potential maintenance issues and optimize manufacturing productivity," Thomas said.
5. Dealing with privacy
With privacy concerns at an all time high, the data collection practices of many organizations are continually coming into question. In many instances, the issue that is raised has to do with who owns the data that's collected.
"I think it's the idea that people think there's such a thing as data ownership, and, because data is so fungible and replicable, that idea of data ownership really is nonsense," Laney said. "It's all about data rights and privileges."
As such, Laney said, organizations that are producing or capturing data needs to focus on defining rights and privileges associated with that data.
Additionally, because most people don't want to be governed or policed, they'll need to position data governance in a way that showcases improved value in the data. 

Original Source:  Conner Forest, Techrepublic

Monday, April 4, 2016

Microsoft confirms built-in Hyper-V containers are coming to Windows 10 testers soon

Another new feature in the 'Anniversary' update to Windows 10 will be built-in Hyper-V Container support, Microsoft officials are now confirming.

Microsoft is building support for Hyper-V containers into Windows 10 client, company officials publicly acknowledged late last week.
On the last day of its Build 2016 developer conference, Microsoft announced that -- as rumored last year -- container support is coming to Windows 10.
Microsoft officials said the feature will be opt-in in "upcoming flights" of Windows 10 for Windows Insiders. (I've seen a screen shot from one Insider, Daniel Gut, that indicates that container support is already an opt-in option in current Windows 10 Enterprise Insider builds, for what it's worth.)
To get access to containers in the test builds, Insiders will need to enable both the Containers and the Hyper-V features once they're available to Insiders testing Windows 10 Redstone 1, a k a the Windows 10 "Anniversary" update due out this summer.
From Microsoft's April 1 blog post:
Bringing Hyper-V Containers natively into Windows 10 ... "will further empower developers to build amazing cloud applications benefiting from native container capabilities right in Windows. Since Hyper-V Containers utilize their own instance of the Windows kernel, your container is truly a server container all the way down the kernel. Plus, with the flexibility of Windows container runtimes containers built on Windows 10 can be run on Windows Server 2016 as either Windows Server Containers or Hyper-V Containers."
Based on information from a Microsoft presentation at Build last week, these containers will support Nano Server only to start, though Windows Server Core support is still coming.
Nano Server offers Windows Server customers the option of running Windows Server stripped down to its smallest footprint. Nano Server is about 1/20th the size of Windows Server Core, and will consist only of the essential components (Hyper-V, Clustering, Networking, Storage, .Net, Core CLR) -- and no user interface.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Confidentiality Availability and Integrity of Data Information

One of the basic standards of providing a secure system is that of guaranteeing confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Likewise called the CIA triad, it is generally perceived in information assurance models. Confidentiality is confirmation of information security and insurance against unapproved disclosure. Confidential information can include personal identifiable data, for example, Social Security, financial card data or account numbers, or, business data, for example, money related information, employee records, and trade secrets. 

An example of an infringement of confidentiality would be a hacker obtaining access and perusing government email messages. It is not generally apparent that data has been leaked. In this way, people and organizations ought to find a way to guarantee confidentiality by permitting just authorized people, procedures, or gadgets to read the data. 

Everybody and everything who accesses data  ought to be verified in some way, for example, a client name and a secret key, or by swiping a card and entering a PIN. Access to information can be controlled by relegating authorizations to folders and records just to approved users and to just users that need access. That implies, don't grant access to a user who doesn't need the access. 

Encryption can ensure against the loss of confidentiality by changing over information into a scrambled format which has no meaning unless you have a key. 

All information, whether very still or in movement, for example, information in distributed storage or bridging the system, ought to be encrypted. Honesty is shielding information from unapproved change. Data integrity can be compromised when information has been altered, or destroyed, either maliciously or accidentally.

A case of an infringement of integrity would be a student going into the grades and changing his or her Algebra grade from a C to an A. To secure against infringement of integrity, the system ought to be checked for strange or suspicious activity. Solid review approaches ought to be set up. What's more, software intrusion detection, for example, Tripwire, can be used to monitor checksums for unapproved changes. Accessibility is guaranteeing information and administrations are accessible to approved clients when required. 

A denial of service attack is an attack against availability which sends numerous request to a system with an end goal to interfere with or suspend services to genuine users. A simple denial of service attack is not effective. A distributed denial of service attack is more effective as it uses armies, or botnets, to launch an attack. I've gone to the website Digital Attack Map, and we can see here active distributed denial of service attacks.

In the event that we tap on Understanding DDoS, where you can take in more about what is a distributed denial of service assault. There are, then again, components that could be utilized to guarantee information accessibility, for example, keeping systems current and overhauling, when vital. To avoid information loss, back up systems regularly and store in an off-site location. Today's networks and the internet of things pose unique challenges in managing information as all systems are essentially interconnected. 

Use a layered approach and monitor to give confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Let's do a quick challenge. If I gained access to the company's payroll information and read everyone's payroll information, that would be a violation of integrity, confidentiality or availability? If you said confidentiality you'd be correct as there was an unauthorized disclosure of data.